Risky business

October 2026

We always assume the summer will be a slower time, when we’re focused on being outdoors and enjoying the warm weather. The team here at Manulife did enjoy the summer months, but we also made some great improvements that are important to your business.

In June, we renovated our medshare process (sharing medical evidence with other insurance companies) to improve overall efficiency. We’re now requesting medshares more quickly, have introduced secure file transfers, and established a dedicated team focused on providing better service. We’re also transferring information as we receive it, provided the advisor is the same for all carriers.

These improvements give you greater confidence in choosing Manulife as the lead carrier for your high-net-worth and complex cases.

We’ve made several updates to our Manulife E-Application, including increasing the character limit to allow more detailed information for the question on the advisor report "Tell us any other information that may be useful in reviewing this application, as well as any special policy date or other requests ".

This enhancement allows you to provide more context, helping us better understand the expectations you've set with your client and improving the overall speed of the underwriting process.

Based on your feedback, we've made many other enhancements including improved performance with faster screen transitions for a smoother, more efficient experience as you move through the application. We’ve also expanded eDelivery capabilities to support corporate-owned policies, providing a more streamlined experience for both you and your clients.

Our MAUDE (Manulife Automated Underwriting Decision Engine) AI approval tool continues to deliver strong results. Because we're confident in the quality of MAUDE's decisions, we’ve increased the age and face amount approval limits, allowing more applications to be processed automatically.

Today, nearly 50% of our Mass Market applications are approved instantly by MAUDE upon submission of the electronic application or completion of the tele-interview.

We’ve also fine tuned the approval engine. Cases that are approved by MAUDE move through a series of administrative checks, including the Medical Information Bureau and indexing the client to determine if we have inforce policies on the insured. At the same time, our IT team has been refining the process resulting in approvals that can occur in just seconds and average less than a minute.

While approvals will eventually display directly within the application screen, for now a New Business Notification is generated and made available through Advisor Portal shortly after case approval.

The results have been significant. Compared to last year, we've seen:

• A 50% increase in same-day approvals
• An average reduction of about 10 days in Mass Market case cycle times over the past six months

We're also empowering our underwriting team with new AI capabilities, including the launch of the updated Digital Owl APS navigation tool.

Attending Physician Statements (APSs) have grown significantly in length over the past several years, resulting in more information for underwriters to sift through. Digital Owl helps underwriters quickly identify the most relevant details within a case, enabling them to focus their expertise where it matters most.

Our underwriting team is trained on using tools effectively, and we’re already seeing impressive results. One High-Net-Worth underwriter reported reviewing 5 APSs in the time it previously took to review 2.

This means our underwriters have more time for critical thinking, generating competitive offers on our more complex cases.

At Manulife, we don’t let summer interfere with our focus on improving our advisor experience. We're committed to continuously improving our applications, tools, and processes to create a better buying experience for your clients and support the growth of your business.

Stay tuned for more exciting updates in the weeks and months ahead. 

For more underwriting tips and insight follow Karen Cutler on LinkedIn. Karen is our VP, Head of Underwriting and Claims, Chief Underwriter Individual Insurance.